Licensed CC-BY-NC-ND.
As you stood to leave, I could not collect
the light reflecting from your eyes; I could
only share the colors of the world, the
fluid shimmering of rainbows, in the tear formed
upon your cheek. You turned and your last smile
I gathered in my hands, as a child holding
a soapy bubble in the summer sun,
in awe of its existence, barely
aware of gossamer mortality.
Upon my fingers, stripes of salt where
I brushed away the water from your eyes.
I stir them now into my tea, and sip
the memory how you would not say goodbye.
You simply kissed me and then walked away
into the vernal rain. I sat still
and stared into my cup, reading the leaves,
half believing their prognostications,
listening to your absence, silent.
“Better strong than beautiful,” you said,
but I am neither. I knew only what
I had held, what I had let fly away
into a future I no longer lived:
gestures, words, the language of our bodies
writing verse in space. We may never dance
again. Time to close. Outside now, the way
is clear of steps. Only impressions in
the field where you have lately crossed my mind.
